Hacker News: gumby271

New comment by gumby271 in "FBI used iPhone notification data to retrieve deleted Signal messages"

gumby271 — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 17:01:15 +0000

In the Signal app itself there's an option to hide the message body or both the sender and body, that way the OS wont have anything to store in the history.

New comment by gumby271 in "FBI used iPhone notification data to retrieve deleted Signal messages"

gumby271 — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 16:55:30 +0000

I think that's how the Android notification history works. If I uninstall an app, the entries in the history aren't shown anymore. You also have to opt in to notification history and toggling it off and back on clears the old entries. There's also a time window that it keeps entries for: https://source.android.com/docs/core/display/notification-hi...

New comment by gumby271 in "OpenScreen is an open-source alternative to Screen Studio"

gumby271 — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 14:00:44 +0000

What the fuck?

New comment by gumby271 in "Android Developer Verification"

gumby271 — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:27:28 +0000

Android is for everyone, provided they submit to Google exclusively. It's not about power users, and that isn't a speed bump. You can protect vulnerable users without centralizing power like they did, but that's not their motivation so here we are.

New comment by gumby271 in "Passengers who refuse to use headphones can now be kicked off United flights"

gumby271 — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 18:12:33 +0000

Bet it won't happen twice though.

New comment by gumby271 in "Making WebAssembly a first-class language on the Web"

gumby271 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 10:44:42 +0000

Sorry I just saw this, if Kotlin isn't native, then what is the "native" way to write android apps?

New comment by gumby271 in "Google details new 24-hour process to sideload unverified Android apps"

gumby271 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 10:42:47 +0000

Really? So all app installs on Android 17+ will have to be done online?

New comment by gumby271 in "Google details new 24-hour process to sideload unverified Android apps"

gumby271 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 10:40:34 +0000

Really? I turned Play Protect off and have never been prompted to turn it back on, what phone do you have that does that?

New comment by gumby271 in "Google details new 24-hour process to sideload unverified Android apps"

gumby271 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:55:52 +0000

Which I also don't like, but at least that can be done offline. The signature could be verified on device without sending everything to Google. If they have to track the 20 seats for the hobbyist accounts then they have to be tracking every single install

New comment by gumby271 in "Google details new 24-hour process to sideload unverified Android apps"

gumby271 — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 22:24:15 +0000

I mean, I'm happy to be conspiratorial about it too, I give Google no benefit of the doubt, but outside of Play Protect I don't think they explicitly say "your phone is telling us every app you install." This new feature is them making that explicit.

New comment by gumby271 in "Google details new 24-hour process to sideload unverified Android apps"

gumby271 — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 21:16:10 +0000

So let's say I'm F-Droid, an organization making a direct competitor to the Google Play Store and openly pointing out how much scammy shit is available in that store. My options are 1) submit my identity to Google (my competitor) so they can identify me and choose to revoke that verification at any point, or 2) I can tell all my users that they must go through these scary dialogs AND wait 1 day before they can use my competing product? That's cool, glad we've got the options laid out in front of us.

I forgot 3) instruct my users how to use ADB from another computer to install my competing app. Awesome.

New comment by gumby271 in "Google details new 24-hour process to sideload unverified Android apps"

gumby271 — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 20:41:04 +0000

Right, if this is being built into AOSP I dont see how they wouldn't add an adb command to immediately skip the "Advanced Flow" wait. if it's safe to let uses run "adb install", then "adb skip-advanced-flow" should be just as safe to do too.

New comment by gumby271 in "Google details new 24-hour process to sideload unverified Android apps"

gumby271 — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 20:33:42 +0000

> In addition to the advanced flow we’re building free, limited distribution accounts for students and hobbyists. This allows you to share apps with a small group (up to 20 devices) without needing to provide a government-issued ID or pay a registration fee.

I don't quite understand how those installs would be tracked. If I create a "hobbyist" account and share the apk, are the devices that install that app all reporting it to Google? To my knowledge, Google only does this through the optional Play Protect system, is that now no longer optional? I'd like to know if my computer is reporting every app I install up to Google.

New comment by gumby271 in "AirPods Max 2"

gumby271 — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 02:12:14 +0000

My Pixel buds from Google have been pretty good since they support Bluetooth multipoint. I'd love to find some good headphones like Beats or the airpods, but Apple doesn't seem to support those standards, it only works with other Apple devices.

New comment by gumby271 in "Mouser: An open source alternative to Logi-Plus mouse software"

gumby271 — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 21:07:17 +0000

That's pretty cool, I've been wanting something like this so I don't have to reach for the touchpad on my Mac all the time. But I gotta say, I did NOT expect to be scrolling in the Z axis all of a sudden on that site!

New comment by gumby271 in "Making WebAssembly a first-class language on the Web"

gumby271 — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 20:11:59 +0000

The native locked down options are the natives apps you're advocating for, I don't understand. They're the Swift/uikit or Koltin/jetpack apps. It sounds like you don't like web technology in general and would rather everyone do it the centralized Apple/Google way?

New comment by gumby271 in "Making WebAssembly a first-class language on the Web"

gumby271 — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 13:18:38 +0000

Which is very much Google's approach to Android. AOSP could be targeted directly by devs, but Google pushes everyone to use Google services in their apps (and assume it's available on any android device) which means Android with Google services is the only viable version of Android out there.

New comment by gumby271 in "Making WebAssembly a first-class language on the Web"

gumby271 — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 13:13:45 +0000

But the app-slop is totally fine right? Apple controlling every piece of software on my phone hasn't gone too far? Empowering the web to compete with Apple and Google's native locked down options is the only viable alternative I see.

New comment by gumby271 in "Lil Finder Guy"

gumby271 — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:55:09 +0000

Looks like Apple decided they need their own version of the Android mascot. Theirs is definitely a little more unsettling than the little droid guy though.

New comment by gumby271 in "SynthID: A tool to watermark and identify content generated through AI"

gumby271 — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:27:26 +0000

I'm sure Apple would love that too. More seriously, would that also mean all editing tools would need to re-sign a photo that was previously signed by the original sensor. How do we distinguish an edit that's misleading vs just changing levels? It's an interesting area for sure, but this inverse approach seems much trickier.